Joshua Dale is
a Foreign Lecturer in the English Department of Tokyo Liberal Arts University,
teaching American and British Culture.

In "Authentic Listening," Porter and Roberts
(1987) present a convincing argument for the use of authentic materials--those
intended for native speakers rather than non-native learners--in the second
language classroom . Their detailed listing of the advantages of these materials
may be summarized in one word: context. Unlike ELT materials, which are designed
to focus on a limited number of language functions, authentic materials are
packed with meaning and associations connected to their culture of origin.
But how is this over-abundance typically deployed in the classroom? According
to Porter and Roberts, "Authentic texts . . . commit us to trying to replicate
in class the roles the native speaker plays in the authentic situation" (p.182).
For example, consider the difference between a textbook page which offers
a reproduction of a restaurant menu and a real menu in glossy full-color offered
to each student. The former offers information only: the context of dining
in a restaurant has been removed. Distributing actual menus restores some
of this context--a much larger number of item choices, information about payment,
tax, etc.--but does this place the learner in the role played by a native
speaker at a restaurant?

Not exactly. But one might
come much closer to realizing Porter and Roberts' definition by using, for
instance, a situational role play following the Natural Method: small groups
of students at separate tables, the aforementioned menus, student waiters
with real order pads serving up plastic food, Muzak for authentic background
noise, napkins, place settings, "surly waiter" and "fly-in-the-soup" role
cards. Obviously, there are no limits with this approach towards authentic
materials: it is a continuum, a sliding scale with the textbook page at one
end and, presumably, a field trip to a real restaurant at the other.

The Lived Reality of Another Culture

If the goal of placing
students in the exact position as native speakers is an impossible one, then
why use authentic materials? I believe the advantages lie in the students'
awareness of these materials as authentic; i.e., as part of the lived reality
of another culture. Authentic materials thus have a tremendous potential for
stimulating the imagination of students in a way impossible to realize with
standard ELT materials. The meaning contained in authentic materials is over-determined;
by this I mean that they typically contain more--at times much more--information
than is necessary for completing a particular classroom task. The faculty
of the imagination comes into play when students are required to scan large
amounts of material and construct patterns of relation between items they
identify as significant.

There is another way in
which the meaning of authentic materials is over-determined: they have a special
aura generated by their direct association with the daily lives of people
from another culture. This is the point at which the connection between authentic
materials and the imagination is fully realized: for through this fetishistic
contact with an item whose meaning lies beyond its physical existence, the
imagination may forge a link through which to apprehend an existence manifestly
different from its own. Authentic materials, in other words, offer the student
access to a spark of "reality" which may propel him or her to greater insight
and knowledge of people from other cultures.

Tourist Brochures

The series of activities
I will describe all use brochures describing various tourist attractions across
the United States. There are several reasons for choosing this particular
type of authentic material. Brochures cost nothing: even multiple copies are
available for free if you're willing to empty the racks. They are also light,
portable and easy to obtain from convention centers, major hotels, the American
Automobile Association, etc. It is even possible to acquire them without visiting
the United States, by writing to the Chambers of Commerce of various states
(sorry about the American bias here; needless to say, brochures from countries
other than the US would be just as effective). The most important reason for
choosing brochures, however, is that they're interesting: highly visual, attention-grabbing,
packed with both advertising rhetoric and practical information. In addition,
we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that much money and creativity went into
the design of these slips of paper, aspects which we language teachers are
quite free to use to our advantage--after all, we're not reproducing them,
in whole or in part.

Brochure Questionnaire

This activity involves one-page
brochures: stiff rectangular cards, typically with picture and captions on
the front, information on the back. Students are paired for the first half
of the activity with each pair receiving one brochure. After reading the brochure
together with their partner, each student receives a questionnaire. Each brochure
has buried somewhere within it the answer to one of the questions; for instance,
"Where can you have a champagne brunch?" would be answered by the pair with
the brochure from "'Climb on a Rainbow' Balloon Flights." The students first
work with their own brochure to answer one question, then circulate and talk
to other pairs to find the rest of the answers. The brochures serve as role
cards to the extent that the students act as if they will be taking the trip
described by their brochure, thus encouraging the use of communicative English:
"Where are you going?" or "What are you going to do?" instead of "What answer
do you know?"

Once everyone has completed
the questionnaire, each pair of students alternates asking and answering all
the questions to check their answers. I end this activity by asking the students
a deceptively simple question: Would you want to visit this place? This is
a preview for later activities which concentrate on the wider cultural issues
around brochures. The real question I'm asking is: Is the brochure successful
in its purpose of generating a desire on the part of the reader to visit the
destination it describes?

Travel Agencies

The second set of activities
uses regular-sized trifold brochures, which have more information and graphics
than the one-page cards. I divide the class into thirds: two thirds are tourists
and receive short one or two-sentence role cards describing their interests
or characters. The cards may specify a character with a certain hobby, a large
family, someone who has been working to the point of exhaustion, etc. Once
they receive their role cards, the students decide what kind of vacation they
will try to find. Meanwhile, the remaining third of the class splits further
into three groups, each of which is a travel agency. The new multiple page
brochures are split evenly among the three companies (include the one page
brochures if sheer numbers are needed; the ratio of brochures to tourists
should be around 2:1) and the travel agents spend a few minutes studying them.
The goal of the vacationing students is to find the perfect destination, while
the travel agents compete to sell as many trips as possible.

Here the comments of the
students as they work through the activity begin to reflect the effect of
the brochures on the imagination. Those in the tourist role, when in the process
of locating their perfect location, often ask the travel agents to explain
or justify those brochures describing what strikes them as strange or unusual.
This activity provides a good example of how imagination may supersede hard
fact to apprehend a different cultural reality. For instance, the brochure
for "Bedrock City" mentions nowhere that the Flintstones' characters originated
on an American children's television program, yet students were able to ascertain
from the images and information the brochure did provide that there was some
outer cultural context for the images of Fred Flintstone and the gang, even
linking this realization to other, known aspects of American culture (the
fad for dinosaurs represented by Jurassic Park).

Maps and Directions

Many of the multiple-page
brochures also include maps to the destination they describe: these lend themselves
well to an activity involving route-following and directions. The worksheet
I use contains a line drawing of the United States; students test their knowledge
of American geography by tracing their route from an arbitrary starting point
(in a brazenly regionalist fashion, I usually choose Seattle, my hometown)
to the destination on their brochure: the Grand Canyon, Disneyland, Niagara
Falls, etc. They attempt to label as many states and cities as they can along
the way.

After their attempt to label
the route from memory, the students receive photocopies of road maps which
they use to more accurately chart the path to their destination (some pre-teaching
of the US highway system of state and interstate freeways, toll roads, etc.
is needed here). When the students are finished, they are paired with members
of other groups whom they verbally guide to their destination. I also give
the students a "driving distances and times" chart so they can discover how
long it would take to drive to their destination. Here the reaction of students
centered around what for many was the first true apprehension of the radically
different scale extent in the United States as compared to Japan, where this
unit was taught. At first the students knew only the distance to their destination
as measured by eye on the map and in miles by adding up the map's mile indicators.
Distance, however, is a relatively abstract means of coming to terms with
scale; which was obvious in the struggle of the student's to relate their
map journey to their previous travel experiences. This contrasted greatly
to their reaction once time, represented by the "driving distances and times"
chart, entered the picture. Time is a concrete indicator in this case, representing
as it does the hours or days spent behind the wheel of a car. Every student
could relate this measurement of scale to his or her prior experience, and
the gasps heard round the classroom were ample testimony to the imagination's
leap into a new reality represented by the immense scale of vacation travel
in the United States.

Extent of Comprehension

According to Phillips and
Shettlesworth, "It must be accepted that total comprehension has often to
be abandoned as a lesson aim" when using authentic materials (107). However,
if there is time to delve more deeply into the brochures, if the students
work in groups and at home to understand them, then complete comprehension
is possible. Once this is attained, the teacher may move the activities to
a higher level and begin teaching the cultural content of the brochures. Small-group
discussions, writing assignments, speeches, etc. are all methods which lend
themselves to the pursuit of this goal.

Several content areas were
investigated in my class. First, the images presented by the brochures: the
selection and presentation of these are as important to the purpose of the
brochures as are the words they contain. Students discussed how the choice
and composition of the images on the brochure contributed to its goal of attracting
visitors. What emotional content were the pictures meant to convey? Obviously
answering this question required exercising the imagination, but more was
involved than merely staring at a picture. In order to interpret the images,
students were required to place themselves in the scene, imagining themselves
at the site of the photograph. They were aided in this when they examined
the language-- adjectives, descriptive phrases, etc.--that the brochures employed
to further their purpose.

In the "Bedrock City" and
highway map examples cited previously, the authentic nature of the brochures
provided the necessary spark to kindle the students' imaginary efforts to
begin exploration of the culture which produced these materials. After the
students achieved total comprehension of multiple brochures, they were able
to extend their imaginative capacity and progress further into the world portrayed
by these authentic materials. From this point, they were able to make generalizations
about the aspects or qualities of leisure activities which are most valued
in the United States, and proceeded even further to comment upon hitherto
unknown aspects of the American character.

References

Porter, D. and Roberts, J. (1987). " Authentic Listening
Activities." In M. Long and J. Richards, (Eds.), Methodology in TESOL:
A Book of Readings. (pp. 177-187). New York: Newbury House.

Phillips, M.K. and Shettlesworth, C.C. (1987). "How to Arm
Your Students: A Consideration of Two Approaches to Providing Materials for
ESP." In M. Long and J. Richards, (Eds.), Methodology in TESOL: A Book
of Readings. (Pp. 105-111). New York: Newbury House.